The saga of Julian Assange seems to be drawing to a climax – one that will decide the fate of this historic whistleblower who, for years, has been a giant thorn in the side of governments everywhere.His role in exposing the machinations of the US government over the years earned him the plaudits of liberals – until the Bush era ended, and he started exposing the crimes of the Obama administration and – most pointedly – the hypocrisy and venality of Hillary Clinton and her journalistic...

The Syrian and Iraqi cities of Aleppo and Mosul have strikingly similar situations – yet the Western media perform a complete mental flip over the respective conflicts. Consecutive reports in news broadcasts set new standards of doublethink by presenting the battles underway in each city as diametrically opposite, when in fact they’re the same. Both are crucial sites for the defeat of illegally armed insurgents. Aleppo and Mosul, each located far north in neighboring Arab countries, are the...

Syria’s army and Hezbollah and Iranian allies are preparing for a massive invasion by thousands of Isis fighters who will be driven out of Iraq when Mosul falls. The real purpose behind the much-trumpeted US-planned “liberation” of the Iraqi city, the Syrian military suspect, is to swamp Syria with the hordes of Isis fighters who will flee their Iraqi capital in favour of their “mini-capital” of Raqqa inside Syria itself. For weeks now, Western media and the American experts it likes to quote...

When the US government invaded Iraq in 2003, I wonder how many US officials contemplated the possibility that the cycle of death and destruction that they were initiating would be continuing 13 years later. And yet, here we are — more than a decade after Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched — and US and Iraqi soldiers are, once again, battling over control of Mosul. The battle for Mosul is being met with considerable indifference or nonchalance among many Americans. After all, there are so...

Who has the major responsibility for creating the confrontation between the US and Russia in Syria? How have these two major nuclear powers moved closer and closer to the brink of World War III? At the moment, one clear way to resolve this clash is for Syria’s armed forces to win an unambiguous victory over the forces seeking to overturn the existing government. Bloody as it may be, the defeat of the rebel forces will defuse the military portion of the conflict between the US and Russia, at...

During the 2008 economic crisis, Iceland’s government froze offshore accounts held by foreign investors in that country’s currency, the krona. Recently, the government of Iceland announced it would unfreeze the accounts if the account holders paid a voluntary “departure tax,” which could be as high as 58 percent. Investors who choose not to pay the departure tax would have their investment “segregated” into special funds that only invest in CDs issued by Iceland’s central bank. These CDs are...

Why do we hear only of the “humanitarian crisis in Aleppo” and not of the humanitarian crisis everywhere else in Syria where the evil that rules in Washington has unleashed its ISIS mercenaries to slaughter the Syrian people? Why do we not hear about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen where the US and its Saudi Arabian vassal are slaughtering Yemeni women and children? Why don’t we hear about the humanitarian crisis in Libya where Washington destroyed a country leaving chaos in its place? Why...

“People don’t trust Hillary Clinton, and no one can agree on why,” begins a sympathetic piece on the Democratic Party presidential candidate in Fast Company last July. In a CNN poll that same month, only 30 percent of Americans believed Clinton to be “honest and trustworthy.” If voters don’t know what to make of Clinton or how to read her, the blame may lie directly with the candidate herself. In an April 2013 speech made public by WikiLeaks last week, Clinton confided: Politics is like...

It would be monumental, but Western states seem to be moving, ineluctably, towards banning Russian news media channels from satellite platforms and the internet. That outcome – albeit with enormous ethical and political implications – seems to be a logical conclusion of the increasingly frenzied transatlantic campaign to demonize Russia. Washington, London and Paris appear to be coordinating an unprecedented media onslaught that is vilifying Russia for almost every conceivable malfeasance,...

If there is another terrorist attack on US soil, this time because of the death and destruction that the US government is wreaking in Yemen, I can already hear the laments and complaints of statist-Americans: “Oh my gosh, another terrorist attack against us! Why do the terrorists and the Muslims hate us for our freedom and values? Why can’t they see that we’re good people who just want to live our lives in peace? We must now give more power and more money to the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA so that...

Presidents don’t give up power. Executive orders don’t expire at the end of each presidential term. And every successive occupant of the Oval Office since George Washington, who issued the first executive order, has expanded the reach and power of the presidency. The Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers. In recent years, however, American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage war, unilaterally kill Americans, torture prisoners, strip...

The following in an edited version of a paper I presented two weeks ago in a debate on the topic “When should the US use force abroad and what lessons should we learn from America’s use of force in Iraq and how should those lessons inform decisions on future military missions abroad?” There are really two questions here – when is the use of force justified in the context of the key word “abroad” and what have Americans learned regarding overseas interventions from the Iraq experience. As a...